19 December Tuesday

In these weeks before Christmas, there is not a till nor counter in any shop without a bowl or tub of individually wrapped chocolates on offer for each and every customer. It is a little gift offered by each shop to its customers. Cadbury’s Roses. Heroes. Quality Street. In the butcher shop, there is a tin of Celebrations. People take a chocolate and chew on it while they are waiting their turn. Then they take another after they have paid. The same sentence is repeated in every shop: You can worry about The Waistline in the New Year!  The dentist did not offer me sweets today, but he did give me a pen with his name and telephone number on it.

20 December Wednesday

After not finding Tommie at home, I rang around to find him. It was not easy.  Eventually I located him. He is back in the hospital. Today I went to visit. He is in a ward with three other men. All of the men had visitors. Visiting hours are a lively and noisy time. The fluids support stand at the end of his bed was a free standing device. There were no bags hanging on it, so I hung my jacket on one of the empty hooks. Tommie reprimanded me and told me that the nurses would not be happy for me to be using the stand as a coat rack. The nurses were in and out of the ward and not one of them seemed to notice my jacket. Tommie is never happy to disobey rules nor to question authority. I left my coat where it was. After he told me three separate times to move it, I moved it.

21 December. Winter Solstice.The Shortest Day.

Another day of wild and noisy wind. The wind has been thrashing us for days and days.  It never stops. The noise is deafening. Today the label on the post box blew off. The label was a piece of duct tape with the word POST written in thick black letters. The lid of the post box blew off too, even though there was a rock holding it down. The rock and the lid blew off together but the lid did not go too far. I now have a larger rock on top of the box. The duct tape has been blown far away. It has disappeared completely.

22 December Friday

A tractor tooted its horn as it drove past me on the road. There was a length of blue and silver tinsel dangling from the side mirror.

23 December

Seamus has plenty of old batteries around the place. Some are car batteries and the other larger ones had been for his tractor. He uses two of them to hold up the drooping shed door and a few more are clustered around as a way to gather like with like.

24 December

Tommie has been moved to Rathkeevin. He is in a room with one other man. This man spends all day in the Day Room. Tommie does not go to the Day Room. He was in a cranky mood when I visited today. His legs are giving him a lot of discomfort. He said he hopes that no one comes to visit on Stephen’s Day as he wants to give the horse racing his full attention. I promised him that I would not be visiting on that day. He asked me to spread the word.

26 December. Tuesday. Stephens Day.

I walked out along the narrow road to Ladys Abbey in between downpours. Thick ivy has covered nearly every bit of the stone building.  The shapes of the ruined Abbey exist as things somewhere between topiary and architecture.

27 December Wednesday

A pigeon has been massacred and eaten outside the door to my workroom. It was the fox who killed, ate and left the mess.  There was nothing I could do except sweep up the remains so that I do not step in them. I threw the whole mess over the stone wall.

29 December Friday

Everything remains closed. Shops and businesses are locked up tight. Supermarkets, petrol stations and pharmacies are open, with restricted hours, but nothing else is open. The Twelve Days of Christmas go on for twelve days.

31 December. Sunday. New Years Eve.

The shelf in Marie’s sitting room was narrow. It was made out of a single piece of wood. The shelf was just wide enough for a single can. Lined up along this shelf were seven spray cans of air freshener. Each can offered a different scent, or flavour. The caps were all different colours.  Marie was proud of her selection of smells. She had them spread out with a little bit of space between each can, just to make certain that each could be individually admired. She waited for me to say something about the selection of cans but I found myself speechless.

1 January. New Years Day. Monday 2024

I brought in three wheelbarrow loads of firewood this afternoon. Already I can hear a wasp buzzing around the room. He came in with the wood. The heat has woken him up and now he floats around in a sleepy stupor.  If I can catch him I will toss him out the door.  The cold will probably kill him but perhaps he will find his way back to some timber for more sleep.

2 January Tuesday

There is water everywhere. From a distance it looks like the Knockmealdown mountains drop directly down into a lake. It is not possible to see the far edges of the lake. The river is no longer a river. The river is part of the huge lake that covers every field in sight. It is beautiful but it is not good. There are swans on the lake.

3 January Wednesday

I went to the pharmacy to get something for Simon’s cold and cough. I described his condition. The pharmacist said: “What you need is The Cough Bottle.” No one ever speaks of cough syrup. It is always The Cough Bottle.

4 January Thursday

I asked at the shop if they had any frozen spinach.  The woman at the till said No.  Not only did they have no frozen spinach but she said that they have never had any frozen spinach. She said I was the first person who had ever even asked for it.

6 January. Twelfth Night. Little Christmas. Nollaig na mBan. Women’s Christmas.

Today is the day for the tree to come down and the decorations and the cards and the wreathes to be put away or thrown away. If one has all of these jobs to do, the day is a busy one. The putting away and returning the house to how it was before the holidays can be a lot of work. At the end of this day, women are supposed to take time for themselves. To share food with other women and to have the evening off after doing so much work during the extended holiday. Clearing the way to take the evening off seems like a small reward indeed.

29 November Wednesday

The Aer Lingus flight from Boston was full of shoppers.  People might have gone over to celebrate Thanksgiving with family but it was obvious that the larger lure was for the long weekend of Black Friday shopping.  Every single person who boarded the plane was wearing new clothes.  Everyone was wearing new clothes and they were looking carefully at everyone else to see what they were wearing. New boots. New shoes. New trousers, belts and jackets.  New hats. The Must-Have item was  apparently a hooded sweatshirt. Two thirds of the passengers wore a brand new hooded sweatshirt. The passengers eyed one another, checking out purchases, as well as commenting and comparing places and prices.  There was a fair bit of bragging and oneupmanship. It was a hugely competitive atmosphere. And that was all before we sat down and fastened our seatbelts.

On arrival at Shannon at 5 am, the luggage carousel was full of enormous outsized suitcases.  The suitcases were so heavy that men had trouble dragging them off the carousel and pulling them up onto their trolleys. Some couples had four huge heavy cases between them, plus their carry-on bags. There was no doubt that the cases were full up with their shopping bounty. In comparison, our small lightweight cases looked like something made for dolls.

Shannon Airport is surrounded by its car parks. There is a short term car park and a long term car park.  Even at the furthest distance from the terminal building it is never more than a six minute walk to one’s car. For this trip, we decided to try the on-line car park because we thought it would be a cheaper option for the number of days away. When I am on my own I usually take the bus. After eating toast and drinking tea in the single restaurant in the terminal, I left Simon and walked out to the on-line car park.  Perhaps there is a courtesy bus that travels between this car park and the terminal but it was not visible when we parked, at about noon on the way into the airport for our outgoing flight, nor was it visible, if it does indeed exist, at that early hour.  I walked a kilometre to get to the car in the dark, seeing not a single person nor a  single vehicle. I was not surprised by the lack of bus service, the lack of outdoor lighting nor by the emptiness of the area. I was just glad that it was not raining. This is not an early morning kind of country.

1 December Friday

The same man who arrived a few weeks ago as the messenger from The Master of the Ardfinnan Hunt came again today. He told me that The Hunt will be around on Saturday. He said that they will be in the area, but that this time they will be without the horses.  It is difficult to imagine how this might work.  The dozens of beagles and other assorted dogs will run and rush around in their excited and frenzied pack but I cannot imagine how the men will be able to keep up with them on foot. The dogs are trained to come to the sound of the horn. I always dread the arrival of The Hunt but this time I am kind of curious as to how it will work.  I am wondering if the men will be wearing their snug fitting hunt jackets, jodphurs, high boots and their little helmets, or will they be in jeans and fleeces and wellie boots? I think that there is less chance than ever that they will catch the fox.

2 December Saturday

I took Tommie some of the small German stollen cakes that he loves.  It is only at this time of year that I can buy them. I try to take them to him as often as I can. The marzipan inside the stollen reminds him of Knocklofty House. He enjoys an excuse to talk about Knocklofty House. He was remembering the IRA kidnapping of Lord and Lady Donoughmore from the Big House in 1974. He said that there was no harm to anyone out of it all and that there was never even a ransom demand.  He told me that the couple were dropped off in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, still in their pyjamas after five days, and they had to be driven back home to Tipperary.  Lady Donoughmore had claimed that it was a wonderfully exciting adventure and she recounted the story about it for years.  Tommie said that she was a fine and spirited woman and that she smoked cigarettes.  He said that was the done thing at the time.

3 December Sunday

Once again the threat of the arrival of The Hunt came to nothing.  I heard the dogs in the distance up the hill in the direction of Donal Keating’s fields, but we saw nothing.

4 December Monday

Croan is going to bring us some firewood. He is our new source of timber.  He was not certain about exactly where we live so he asked me to text him our Eircode. When we were first assigned an Eircode, in 2015, the government was very polite about the new post code system.  Every house and every business was given its own seven letters and numbers.  We were assigned the code but we were told in the most agreeable way possible that we did not have to use it at all if we did not want to use it. So no one used it. It appeared that there was no reason to use it.  Slowly the Eircode has become essential.  Couriers as well as the post office, require it to locate addresses and increasingly the Eircode is typed into a phone or a GPS system to locate any business or home. We are less apt to find people driving around the roads in desperation looking for a person to ask about another person so that they can deliver something. The Eircode gets everyone to wherever they need to go. And now we are using it to get a double load of firewood delivered.

5 December Tuesday

Róisín paints Brown Furniture. It is what she does for a living. She goes to car boot sales and second hand shops and she buys up the old dark furniture that she says no one wants anymore. Sometimes the furniture is heavy and cumbersome, but sometimes it is just cheap lightweight stuff that has been heavily varnished to make it look sturdy and imposing. She tells anyone who will listen that no one wants Brown Furniture any more. She says it sucks the air out of a room. She is scornful when she speaks of Brown Furniture. Sometimes she strips the varnish off a piece and sometimes she merely sands it a bit, before she paints it in light pastel tones.

6 December Wednesday

It is raining hard. It has been raining hard all day.  The downpour is torrential.  There are rivers of water running down the road. There is news of flooding. We wanted peas with our supper.  The peas were in the freezer. The freezer is out in the shed.  I put on my rubber boots and a raincoat and a hat. I walked outside with a flashlight and an enamel cup.  The cup was for the peas.  I could fill the cup in the shed while standing beside the open freezer and that way I would not have to make two trips to the shed and back. If I did not take a cup with me I would have to bring the bag of frozen peas into the house and then walk back out again to return the bag to the freezer. Saving one round trip was an imperative considering the deluge.

8 December Friday

Pascal is the retired Garda who drives around the area delivering medicines and prescriptions for O’Brien’s pharmacy.  He delivers to people who cannot get out or to those who do not drive.  Everyone knows him and everyone trusts him. He knows everyone and if he does not know them, he knows how to find them. He is also always willing to do other errands if people need things.

11 December Monday

Every year the post office offers a free national stamp with every ten stamps purchased. This year there is a special booklet of twenty stamps with two free stamps in it.  In addition to the free stamp, there is also a free Christmas card with every ten stamps purchased. These are small gifts from the government.

2 November Thursday

The house was cold when we got home yesterday but that was not surprising after several weeks away. The Stanley would not start. We did all of the things that we knew to do to make it function. Nothing worked. We even checked the tank out doors to be certain that the fuel had not been stolen. Pumping out the fuel from someone else’s tank is a serious but not unusual activity at this time of year. I rang Richie and he told me to open the bottom door and poke at a button there with the stick end of a wooden spoon. I did that, but nothing happened. He said that he is mighty popular at this time of year because everyone has heating issues, but he promised to make a trip up to check out our problem soon. We made a fire in the wood stove and went to bed early.

This afternoon Richie arrived. Everything there is to be known about Stanley Stoves is known to Richie. He used to work in the factory down in Waterford that built them. He keeps abreast of changes and new developments in the manufacture of the stoves. He enjoys being an expert. He took the large flat cooking plate off the top of the stove. He looked inside and said it was just as he thought: there was a dead starling inside. The bird’s body was blocking the hole where the flame should ignite, so the air and the gas could not meet. The starling was as hard as a rock.

He took it outside and threw it into some bushes. While he was out there he looked up at our chimneys and noted the crow guards on top. He called these The Chinaman’s Hats which he announced was probably not a politically correct name but sure he knew that we knew what he meant, didn’t we? He said the starlings are devils for getting in as they can squeeze through tiny openings. Once the bird got down the chimney and into the stove, it could not get back out and there was a lot of scrabbling of the fire insulation inside the Stanley. We could see the detritus  of the struggle. He said he has often found starlings in stoves, so they are not a surprise, but the biggest bird he ever found inside a stove was a crow. He still cannot believe that. He gave the Stanley a complete overhaul while he was here and then sat down and drank a cup of tea with us. He is still on the hunt for a woman with whom to share his life. His daughter is keeping an eye out for him and he asked us to look too. He asks this of us each time we see him. He says to mention that in his favor he is a good cook and that he enjoys cooking for someone else. He added that his house is warm and fully paid for. He will turn 60 next year and he says he would rather not get old all alone. He finds these long dark nights especially lonely.

3 November Friday

Simon found a man standing outside the kitchen door. He was tall and thin and he was not young. He was not a man we knew. Simon asked him if he had knocked the door but he said no. He had simply stood still and waited for someone to appear. He told Simon that The Hunt would be around on Sunday. The man in charge of The Hunt wanted us to be forewarned so he sent this man as there was a good chance we would be trapped here by the horses and the dogs and the activity in the boreen.

4 November Saturday

The stain reminds me that this is the season to buy mouse poison. I prefer poison to traps.  I am tired of finding squished bodies in traps. This stain is a small circle of blood. It is immediately outside the kitchen door. Earlier there was a chewed up mess on that spot. The mess was the head of a shrew that had been bitten a few times and then spit out. The body of the shrew was a few inches away. Harry told me that cats often kill shrews, but when they bite into the shrew’s head a bitter and unpleasant poison is released so they drop whatever they have bitten into. When a hungry farm cat kills a mouse, nothing is left behind.

5 November Sunday

I woke up early after a sleepless night plotting ways to blockade the lawn and the garden to keep The Hunt out, or at least to keep the horses out. It is impossible to keep the pack of dogs from going everywhere. They run in a group of 30 or 40 hounds. They are all running low to the ground, sniffing and barking and splintering off into smaller groups and then re-grouping. The rushing running dogs become a liquid mass. When they arrive following a scent, they are everywhere, and there is no controlling their movements. I hate The Hunt but I cannot hate the dogs.

I dragged a long ladder across one narrow access point. Then I parked the car in order to block the way to the lawn and I tied ropes across from the car door handles to a few trees. The opening down at the bottom of the meadow was the hardest place to block off. I used ropes, a long plastic pipe and a cardboard sign. The problem there is that there is a good chance the horses will jump in from Joe’s field and come across the lower meadow. By blocking them running in from one direction I am also blocking them going out again. I know that the Mass Path is badly overgrown so the horses will not be able to ride up that way. I was exhausted by my efforts. The long ladders are too heavy for me.

Simon was neither interested nor bothered by the imminent arrival of The Hunt. He did nothing to aid me in the blockading. He did not even want to listen to my ideas for keeping the horses off the land. I spent all day rushing in and out of the house, listening for the baying of the hounds. They never came. The fox led the whole circus somewhere else. It is dark now and I cannot decide if I am relieved or disappointed that they did not come after my sleepless night of planning, and all of the rushing around this morning. I hope that the fox evaded them. I hope the dogs did not corner him and rip him to pieces.

7 November Tuesday

Being in and out of hospital several times, and then in both Rathkeeven and Clogheen with his ongoing lung infection has been difficult for Tommie. As a result of his bad lungs, we have not taken a shopping trip together for at least three months. Maybe four. I took Tommie in to Dunnes’ Stores today. He never considers going anywhere else. He was waiting for me wearing a clean sweater and his suit jacket when I arrived to collect him. He had been up since 6. He had promised to make a shopping list but he did not do it. I got him headed into the store with a trolley while I went to park the car. He found the going difficult in the supermarket. Each time I found him in an aisle, he sent me off to find something he wanted but could not find. His legs were weak and even while leaning heavily onto his trolley, he did not find the going easy. I did a lot of running back and forth offering him choices and often arriving with the wrong things. How could I know that when he said he will eat any soup at all what he really meant was that he hates chicken soup?  The woman at the till recognized him and she talked and flirted a bit. He has been talking with this check out woman for decades. She remembered his wife Margaret fondly. He perked up with the extra attention but he was glad to sit into the car when we got to it, and he was happier still to sit down in his chair when I got him back to the house.

9 November Thursday

We have some firewood but we need more firewood. Johnny the Timber is all out of wood so we need to find a new source. We are all thinking about firewood: where to get some and how much to order and what kind of wood is best. We are stacking the wood and moving the wood and stacking more under cover and in good rotation of the other already stored firewood. We eye piles of timber in other yards.  We experience firewood envy. We do not use peat. We tried it many years ago but found it soporific. A peat fire puts me to sleep. The government has now banned the cutting and burning of peat for ecological reasons and many people are outraged. They consider the cutting, drying, stacking, gathering and burning of peat out of the bogs to be an inalienable right of every Irish person.

10 November Friday

A toothbrush seen on the ground in a busy city or town or in a train station or an airport is not much of a surprise.  People are always in a rush and people are always dropping things. A toothbrush spotted while out walking on the short stretch of tarmacadam road is a something to think about.

11 November Saturday

At first I thought that the small amount of green growth inside the wheel well of the car was just stuff that had been thrown up and inside while driving through the muck and mud at the farm.  Now I see that some of it is growing.  I have a healthy nettle growing out of the side of the car.

13 November Monday

The three dogs down at the McGrath farm own their bit of road. Some days they move when a motor car comes along but some days they do not move, not for cars nor for tractors. They watch a vehicle coming along and then they watch some more. They are interested in anything that might happen, but because not much happens, there is more watching than looking or chasing. If I toot my horn they might move, but they might not.  If they do move, they do not move quickly. Most days it is easiest to weave around them.

14 November Tuesday

Hazel announced that she loves nothing better than stripping the carcass of a cooked chicken. She loves getting every bit of meat off the bones before throwing them into a pot for a broth. She swears that the fat in the flesh keeps her hands lovely and soft.

15 November Wednesday

The morning is bright and crisp. From inside the house, the world looks wonderful. The fields are bright green. The sky is mostly blue. There are yellow and orange leaves on the trees. But one step outside and the world stinks. The smell of slurry pervades. I gag because the smell is so strong and sharp. It burns the back of my throat and it makes my eyes water. The smell is astringent and it hurts.

16 November Thursday

I nearly fell out of my stand up! I hear this expression often, but it never fails to delight me. Somewhere else a person would say that they were so astonished that they almost fainted.  Falling Out of My Stand Up is a much more exciting way to say the same thing.